Dracula: Gender Perspectives and Historical Truths

Other critics have decided to see Dracula from a gender pondered perspective, and although their interpretations have provoked many critical discussions, such ideas cannot be overlooked. For example, Marjorie Howes perceived the novel to abet for “the mediation of the feminine, bisexuality and homoerotic desire”, and in her article she argued that “the novel’s anxieties about gender definition are related to an ambivalent pattern of expresion and repression that structures the treatment of its fantasies” (1988: 104). Thus, Howes’ critical view argumented that the text was fundamentally based upon a confluence of homosexual desire, and that the “feminine” role was used mostly to conceal such sexual fantasies. Matthew Brennan also points

But who was he, and how did he achieve such fame? In his essay “East European Vampires & Dracula” Felix Oinas examined both the resemblance and differences between the well-known Voievode and Count Dracula so as to see if there is a foundation to support such ideas. As he noted, the original Dracula, or Vlad Țepeș, “was devoid of any vampiristic features,” and became famous “because of the way he executed his victims by impaling them on stakes” (1982: 114), acquiring thus the reputation of one of Europe’s bloodiest tyrants. Paul Dukes analyzes thoroughly in his essay “Dracula: Fact, Legend and Fiction,” the story behind the figure of Count Dracula, showing how “there is a basis in fact and Eastern European legend for the ghoul” (1982: 44). As he explains, the vampire that haunts our dreams is inspired in Romanian history, concretely Stoker’s nineteenth century vampire is inspired in the fifteenth century ruler of the Danubian principality of Wallachia, known as Vlad Țepeș, or Vlad Drăculea (alias Dracula). Yet, Dukes’ analysis more than a comparison between the two figures focuses on demonstrating how Stoker’s creation, although inspired by

Should readers fathom that all superstitions derived from Stoker’s Dracula and related to Transylvania are real? Or should we doubt that these stories have even an ounce of veridity in them? In his recent book The Dracula Dilemma Duncan Light gives a partial answer to such questions and points out that “nothing in Romanian folklore narratives associates Vlad Țepeș with vampirism” (2012: 44). Light dedicates an entire chapter to the Historical Dracula, contrasting it with the Dracula of Literature, showing in this way how the first was the source of inspiration for the second. Schematically, the author examines how Stoker’s main character Dracula is influenced up to a certain point in the medieval legend of Vlad Țepeș, but also how it deflects from it in order to bring to life a sinister